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Monday, January 5, 2009

Monday, January 5, 2009

The other day I threw down the challenge gauntlet, asking you all to find me a cake celebrating the flu or food poisoning. Many of you jauntily took up that gauntlet, brushed it off, and are now attempting a brisk-yet-virtual slap-across-my-face with the following:

Mary B was the first to submit it, and I must say being sick never looked so cute. Of course, I would assume this is a "get well soon" cake, not a "Yay! You have the flu/chicken pox!" cake. Still, not bad.

Jan G. took a more causal* approach to the challenge:

As near as we can make out, the cake board says "I love microbes!" leaving us to assume the purple and yellow mass is supposed to be...a microbe. (It's a gift - what can I say?) Since bacteria and viruses are microbes, and this cake is *clearly* quite enamored with those, I'd say we have as close to a winner as we're going to get. Excellent work, Jan!

* Yes, "causal", not "casual" - though I can see how you'd get those mixed up.

The microbe might be an amoeba; you might have seen them in high school biology. They're like giant bags of goo that change shape to move. Or it might be a paramecium; those purple spikes coming of the purple edge could be cilia, which are little hair-like appendages the paramecium uses as paddles to move around. The purple blob of icing in the center-right is supposed to be a nucleus, so this can't be a virus or a bacterium; viruses don't look like cells, and bacteria don't have nuclei (that's where we eukaryotes - animals, plants, fungi, and protists like amoebas - store our DNA).And that, my friends, is your science factoid of the day!

Okay, I actually love both these cakes, although I might have a hard time eating a diseased face (or a healthy face, for that matter). If nothing else, as has already been noted, congratualtions to the decorator who actually managed to find a shape at CCC can properly acheive!

Word Verification: worthpo--Most of the cakes on this site are worthpo.

My mom worked in a hospital lab and growing up, I remember many home-made cakes designed to look like a petri plate with colonies of bacteria growing on it. This may be why I ended up in the same career field.

Gah! you just reminded me of the fact that when i was in the 6th grade... I made a Cell cake for biology class. It was great, until i tried to transport it on the bus. Then it got smooshed. Still tasted good though.

I am searching around desperately for a photo because my friend had a severe eye infection last year around exam time and another friend of ours got him an ear infection cake, it was genius, a huge ear with blood coming out of it.

My sister told me she wanted me to visit a very funny website and I have been laughing for the past hour! I love this blog. I would like to add it to my favorites list on my Timeless Things blog. Let me know if that is okay with you.

The microbe cake reminded me of putting notes on our food in the shared kitchen refrigerator in my college dorm that said "science project." That would be a great thing to put on the microbe ccc. I'm sure the football players would still eat it anyway, just like they ate the food in college. We got them back with a delicious batch of exlax brownies...

Hmmm. I'm afraid that both cakes are "sweets", though the second one is a very specialized kind of sweet. As an amateur, I'd make it for a biology nerd, for sure. One thing's for sure; without Cake Wrecks, I'd probably never get to see anything like them. Thanks, Wreck Mistress!

I saw the cutest cupcake cake the other day--no, wait, come back! It was handmade by a man for his wife's anniversary. It looked like a curly-haired teddy bear, but here's the thing: Those little points of frosting--rosettes?--that were used as accents on the microbe cake were the bear's fur and eyes and all. As in, you could take the thing apart without having a pound of frosting glop off on your hand. A pointillist cupcake cake! I'm going to try to convince the happy wife to send a picture here.

A "chicken pox party" is where parents bring their kids who haven't had the pox yet over to visit another kid who's got them so their kids will catch it and get it over with at a particularly opportune time (since, after all, the best way to guard against potentially fatal adult chicken pox is getting them as a child).

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